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Coping with depression, anxiety or any other mental health issue is hard.

Harder still is recognising you’re experiencing that issue and being brave enough to do something about it.

This cannot be understated.

Admitting to yourself and to those closest to you that you’re experiencing some difficulties is no small thing and should be commended.

Once you’ve given voice to these challenges you then need to decide what happens next.

In some cases the challenges are simply too severe for you to decide on your own, and that’s fine. Your family, medical and mental health services are all there to support you in making the right decisions for your care.

Whilst it may sound like something out of a Marvel comic book, Fragile X syndrome is a challenge that manifests in children. It impacts on language, emotion, behaviour and attention making social interactions extremely challenging.

It’s also the most common inherited learning disability in the world and there’s a very good chance you’ve never heard of it.

Fragile X Syndrome is caused by the lengthening of the FMR1 gene on the X chromosome which stops production of a key protein in brain development. The more this mutation repeats the greater the chance of a child being born with the condition.

For most their experience of eating disorders is limited to what they see on weekday soap operas which does nothing to communicate not just the complexities of living with an eating disorder or the range of disorders individuals struggle with.

In reality there are over 725,000 people in the UK with eating disorders.

Asperger’s Syndrome is one of the most widely known about disabilities but one of the most commonly misunderstood.

Usually the person in the office who can be a little OCD or who doesn’t get the work ‘banter’ is branded as ‘on the scale’. Which is usually thoroughly unhelpful not only for the individual (especially if they do have some challenges) but because it furthers a wildly inaccurate stereotype.

Roughly 1 in 200 people have Asperger’s syndrome, which is roughly 350,000 people in the UK alone. So there’s a strong chance you know someone with Asperger’s Syndrome even if they don’t have a diagnosis.

One in four adults in the UK experience mental health problems each year.

That’s approximately 14million people, every year, struggling with a diagnosable mental health issue.

Admittedly the term mental health issue is very much catch-all and covers those experiencing anxiety attacks all the way through to enduring and complex mental health conditions who require ongoing support or treatment.

Of these 14million adults, 10.8million of them are of an employable age. With 5.5 million businesses in the UK with multiple employees, that’s roughly 2 employees per business with mental health issues.

One of the great constants, despite what you read in the media is love.

We’re remarkably good at it.

Whether it’s building communities, supporting friends and neighbours or people running towards the danger when things go wrong, we are driven by an unceasing well of love and compassion for one another.